abstract the essential oil obtained by hydrodistillation from the aerial parts of artemisia coerulescens l. var. palmata lam. collected in tuscany (san rossore, pisa, italy), has been analyzed by gc and gc/ms. the main constituents, -thujone and -thujone, represented altogether 77.6% of the oil; all the other compounds were present only in small or trace amounts. a comparison with oils from other subspecies or varieties reported in literature shows important qualitative and quantitative differences.